Phone Call from a Fundie

I am opposed to torture. How sad that we’ve come to a time in history when that needs to be stated.

I also strongly believe that being free to choose your own religion (including choosing none, of course) is a fundamental human right that must be guaranteed throughout the world.

I also believe that being left alone and not being pestered by fundies is one of my rights. Freedom from religion includes not having them knock on my door or call me on the phone. The fact that I might occasionally agree with them is overshadowed by the entertainment value of annoying them right back.

Somehow they got ahold of my phone number. I think they got my address from the Fundie Research Council. That’s the only fundie group who has it (They were giving away a book or DVD or something once, and I wanted to cost them money, so I ordered it.). I’ve never given them my phone number, so they must have used a reverse directory. Roughly every six months or so, I get a call from the ACLJ.

So today, I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang. Ironically, I was working on this blog. Bad timing, fundie! Don’t call an anti-fundie when he’s already busy writing things about you!

I answered the phone and was met with a long silence. This is the sign of a telemarketer. Their dialing robots place a zillion calls simultaneously, then only transfer to a live operator those calls that are answered . That saves the poor schlub who has to talk to you from having to make the calls herself and then sitting there while most of them go unanswered. This is much more efficient. With the dialing robot, as soon as she has finished getting yelled at by one person who is pissed at her for calling, she immediately gets to be yelled at by another person who is pissed at her for calling. She can probably get yelled at 120 times per hour. It’s a much better use of her time.

As I’m sitting there listening to the long silence, I’m trying to guess which lucky organization has earned my wrath today. With the Federal Do Not Call Registry, I no longer get calls from commercial con-men. Now I only get calls from non-profit con-men, who are exempt from the law.

After a good 20 seconds, a woman with a young, perky voice (who, I am sure, is also very hot!) tells me that she’s calling from the ACLJ with an urgent recorded message for all Christians from Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow. She tells me to wait on the line after the recording, so I can talk about the horrors I’ve just heard. I’m always curious to find out the latest perceived insult that has the fundies upset, so I decide to listen.

The next thing I hear is the recording of Jay Sekulow telling me that Christians in Muslim countries are being tortured for being Christian! He gives a couple of examples, then he tells me that the evil Islamic countries are trying to get the United Nations to adopt the “Defamation of Religions” resolution. If enacted into international law, it would make it illegal to spread Christianity!

The recording ended, and I was looking forward to talking to that hot babe again. Hot babes stopped calling me about 20 years ago, so I wanted to remember what it felt like. Imagine my disappointment when the next voice on the line is some other operator! She sounded like she was at least 90. I’m sure she’s very nice, but it was still a major disappointment. Oh well. Now I have no reason not to have a little amusement at their expense. They did call me, after all, and it was to talk about Christianity. I was willing to overlook this offense if they let me talk to the hot babe again, but by this time I’m sure she was already talking to some other guy! How was I supposed to feel?

Anyway, Granny came on the line and said: “So would you like to join the thousands of other Christians and put your name on our petition to stop the resolution to ban the spread of Christianity?”

I said: “No. I think banning the spread of Christianity is a great idea.”

“But do you think it’s a good idea that Muslims are torturing Christians?”

“Considering that you Christians think it’s a great idea for the US government to torture Muslims that you think are terrorists, I’d say turnabout is fair play.”

“Well thank you for your time.”

I haven’t been able to find out much about this “Defamation of Religions” resolution. Apparently it is real and being pushed by some of the Islamic countries. It would make it illegal to defame a religion. This, of course, goes against everything I stand for. There goes my whole shtick! If they ban defaming religion, I’ll have to blog about lawn bowling or something. Save the Bay of Fundie! Oppose the Defamation of Religions resolution!

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Yes. Thank you for that. I was hoping someone would provide an unbiased link. When I Googled it, all I found were articles by religious groups. I wanted something that wasn’t colored by a missionary or anti-Islamic agenda.

A pastor that I spend some time arguing with on a somewhat regular basis spent some time in Pakistan. He had some entertaining stories to tell about being Christian in a Muslim country.

Basically they screw with you every chance they get. You might be sitting at home minding your own business, and the power will go off. Call the power company, and they’ll tell you that your power has been turned of for non-payment. But, I paid my bill. I’m sorry, you’ll have to come down and talk to someone…Ooops, our mistake, you did pay your bill. Your power gets turned back on…until next month when something else gets screwed with.

Entertainingly, if you get caught proselytizing, you can be put in jail, or put to death. By the way as a non-muslim, you can’t testify in court. If a Muslim says they saw/heard you attempting to talk Christianity, you can get into a huge bunch of trouble.

As an atheist, I found the whole thing more than a little amusing.

Mind you, an atheist wouldn’t fare as well as a Christian, but then again, I’m not likely stupid enough to 1) Go to Pakistan, or 2) Attempt to convert a Muslim.

The United Nations passing a “Defamation of Religion” law? That’s amusing. They can enact any “international law” they want. It won’t affect anyone in the U.S., as it will have no jurisdiction over our sovereignty. In other words, the US Constitution trumps it. They cannot use it against anyone in a U.S. court of law, nor can they use it to extradite someone from the U.S. to another country.

I’m no expert on international law, but you are correct. If the UN passes some sort of resolution, it doesn’t have any enforcement power inside the US. We’d have to sign it or ratify it or something. There’s no way we would ever do that. So I’m not worried about it taking effect within the US.

I am concerned that such a thing would be implemented in other countries. Europe, for example, has bent over backward to placate the extreme Muslims. Look at the Danish cartoon controversy from a few years ago. The entire European continent should have told the Muslims to shut the hell up. If they can’t stand freedom of speech, they should move (back) to a country that doesn’t have it.

“International law” is a myth – there is no such thing. What exists are multi-national treaties signed by various nations. Each nation agrees to abide by terms set out in the treaty. For example, war crimes treaties, trade agreements, etc. But in every case where the US signs on to a treaty, the terms of the treaty must comport with the US Constitution for the US to follow it – sovereignty. In the instances where the treaty contained a term that is contrary to US law (and it happens sometimes), the US law trumps the contrary treaty term.

Thus, some “defamation of religion law” that aims to restrict expression against some religion, EVEN IF the US were to sign on to it, would be unenforceable in the US due to the First Amendment.

I was never worried. I just wrote that “save the Bay of Fundie!” thing as a rhetorical device to demonstrate that I really am opposed to that resolution, even though I implied otherwise to the Christian.

The Defamation of Religions resolution is entirely about free speech, which is a basic human right. It’s interesting that the ACLJ is marketing their opposition solely on the grounds of Christian persecution. If Muslims weren’t imprisoning and torturing Christians for proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims, I wonder where they would stand on this issue. In other words, if it were merely about the “defamation” of religion, wouldn’t the Christian fundies be standing with their Muslim fundie brothers? Both camps act massively bent out of shape when anybody says anything bad about their religion.

The irony meter just pegs on this one. Here are these christians with their supposed mandate from god to charge uninvited into other countries, build churches, pass out bibles, indoctrinate children, and generally make racist, bigoted pests of themselves – and then they bitch, piss and moan when they’re told in no uncertain terms that their religion is not wanted. Why, they cry, can’t these heathens see that Gawd and Jeebus are reaching out to them in the form of pasty, obnoxious foreigners? Why oh why aren’t they more grateful? Wel, if we can’t win them over by any other means, we’ll just pass us some laws! That’ll melt their hearts for sure!

This sucks on so many levels. Even if such a measure wasn’t binding, it would give the godbots a legal leg to stand on when they try to sneak their crap into schools, etc. I think anti-defamation or discrimination laws should be restricted to protecting only those attributes people have no choice in, such as race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.